Eligibility

Check if you're eligible for a business account

Check if you’re eligible for a business account

Right now you can open one business account with us, but we're working on offering multiple accounts in the future.

Here’s a summary of businesses and industries we can and can’t support at the moment. We’ve been as transparent as we can about why. And we’ll review this on an ongoing basis, as we understand more about how customers use our accounts.

If you meet this criteria you can apply for a Monzo Business account, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get an account.

Business types we support right now

You can apply for an account if you’re:

  • a sole trader, or the director of a registered limited company by shares (Ltd),
  • based in the UK, and

If you’re a limited company, to be eligible your company needs to:

  • have an active status on Companies House (we can’t support dormant companies),
  • have an active company director (not disqualified) on Companies House,
  • have at least one person of significant control (this can be you) listed on Companies House,
  • have no corporate persons of significant control or corporate directors,
  • make money mostly from selling goods and/or providing services, not mostly from interest or investment income
  • be a tax resident in the UK, and no other countries

You'll also need to make sure that any Person of Significant Control listed on Companies House has an open Monzo current account (either a personal or a business account).

Business types we can’t support right now

  • Partnerships, including Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)
  • Limited companies by guarantee
  • Charities
  • Community interest company (CIC)
  • Public Limited companies (PLC)
  • Clubs or other non-registered organisations
  • Trusts or funds
  • Other registered business types, like an unlimited company (Unltd), industrial and provident society (IPS) or Royal Charter (RC).

We might offer accounts to these business types in future but it’s not in our plans at the moment. That’s because we have to gather and store different information on these customers, and there are different rules around how these types of accounts need to be operated.

Sole traders and limited companies make up around 90% of UK businesses, so we’re focusing on supporting them at the moment.

Other reasons we can’t support you

If your business is based, registered, or a tax resident outside of the UK we can’t offer you an account right now.

And we don’t allow people to use Monzo Business as a client trust account. That means someone holding client or customer money in their account, on behalf of someone else, like solicitors.

Industries we can’t support, no matter your business type

Certain industries have higher risks, where we need to put extra checks and controls in place. We’re currently focusing on industries that don’t need these.

In future, we might offer accounts to some of these industries. But we appreciate this is disappointing for some businesses at the moment.

  • currency exchanges including virtual currencies, and money services business
  • construction and civil engineering
  • mining and quarrying
  • defence and weapons
  • consumer credit or lending money
  • dating or escort services
  • precious metals and stones (like jewellery)
  • tattoo and nail parlours
  • food stands
  • technology equipment, like lasers or telecommunications
  • probate and estate management
  • gambling and betting
  • weapons manufacturing and/or selling
  • unlicensed scrap metal
  • unregistered waste management
  • shell companies
  • illegal or unlicensed drugs
  • used automotive vehicles
  • bidding fee auctions
  • regulated or unregulated financial investment, loan, foreign exchange (FX) or banking businesses
  • selling or making cannabidiol products (CBD), like cannabidiol oil
  • certain types of manufacturing
  • financial and insurance activities
  • public administration and defence, and compulsory social security. That includes things like defence, immigration services, foreign affairs and running government programmes.
  • activities of extraterritorial organisations and bodies. That’s companies like the UN, involved in getting peaceful relations among nations, providing human needs and humanitarian aid, or regulating international trade.

If your industry isn’t mentioned above, you can apply for a business account. But a heads up: we might not accept businesses in other industries too, if we don’t think it’s appropriate.

If your business uses lots of cash, we might not be the right account for you

At the moment you can pay in £5 to £300 of cash in one go, and up to £1,000 every 6 months.

These limits help reduce the risk that people will use cash deposits for financial crime, while still making sure they’re useful to most people. We’re looking at how we could safely increase these limits in future.

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